


pieces of peace in the sun's piece of mind

by babykanima



Series: ride [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 11:35:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3976579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babykanima/pseuds/babykanima
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're the mother who isn't a mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	pieces of peace in the sun's piece of mind

**Author's Note:**

> so i couldn't stop? i'll probably be doing one of these for each of the wives so subscribe to the series if you're wanting to read the others!
> 
> come and [ visit me ](http://lynchcycle.tumblr.com/)

You're the mother who isn't a mother.  
  
Your siblings, before the scavengers tore them apart, were your children. Your little brothers, who if they'd just been born girls like you—but no, you wouldn't wish this on anybody, better they'd died you think. Better to be mowed down by razor sharp barbed wire attached to the wheels of War Boys than forced to— well. Better to be murdered than forced to be a War Lord’s wife.  
  
Your little brothers had called you _mama_ because yours had no time for sweetness in the harshness of the outside: nobody did, not anymore, and it had fallen to you to be the kisses on boo-boos or the songs sung at night (and you never begrudged them for it because you know what's it's like to be their age without somebody to show you love or kindness and that is surely no way to live).  
  
Splendid greets you solemnly when you're first brought in (before Dag and Toast and sweet Cheedo, before Furiosa and Max and _Nux_ ), she cleans the bruises on your face ("They'll die for this." She says dispassionately, "He doesn't like to have his property damaged.") and braids your hair for you neatly and doesn't tell you to stop crying once, even when you throw up from the force of it.  
  
She's not exactly kind, Splendid. She's stubborn and beautiful and _good_ but not kind. It's like the kindness has been beaten out of her, has been raped and forced into a wall of iron that she uses as a defence because she's got no offence left in her.  
  
She sort of reminds you of your own mother actually, in that way where the world had hardened her so irreparably you don't think she knows how to find her way back to 'before'.

You wonder if Splendid ever even had a ‘before’.

Your husband is not a kind man either.

He plays at it, of course. He’ll bring you water and the finest, most white cloth in all the Citadel to dress yourself in and maybe he’ll even kiss your hand but he’s not. . . he’s not _kind_.

Kind men don’t rape.

(What he does is _rape_ , it’s _rape_ , it’s _rape_ it doesn’t _matter_ if he’s your husband you don’t want it; you don’t want the water or the clothes or the kisses, you want him to never touch you again).

He’s evil.

And you _hate_ him.

* * *

Sometimes you cry.

It’s not a bad thing, crying. You don’t think so at least, despite what your mother told you. You’re not weak for crying (you’re _not_ ) when things get too much for you to keep inside anymore and anyway, so what if crying makes you weak?

You’re still strong enough to leave him.

* * *

Despite it all, the first time you get pregnant you’re happy.

Your hands curve around your stomach and Joe is extra careful when he touches you, like one wrong move, wrong too-tight touch could do more than bruise you now, it could also bruise your baby.

Your precious baby.

The morning sickness doesn’t always stay to the mornings and the women who help bathe you make sympathetic little noises when you whimper at their touch. You didn’t think motherhood was meant to be this painful, you think. Surely a woman’s body is meant to actually be able to _withstand_ pregnancy?

You feel like your body is going to shut down any day now.

You lose the baby in the third month and it’s Splendid who’s shaking you awake with a tight look of fear on her face because _there’s so much blood._

She pulls you up out of your soaked sheets and you’re screaming, screaming, screaming when Dag wanders in with a frown, “What’re you doing makin’ all that noise, huh?”

It’s Toast who answers (and you’re still not used to her, she’s too new, too volatile), “She lost the baby.”

“Oh.” The blonde says, sagging against the wall, “Is that all?”

* * *

You measure your time with Joe by how many times he rapes you, or by how many times Toast rages or Cheedo flinches or Splendid cuts herself. You measure your time in the amount of babies you lose.

You go through seven babies.

Dag had a little boy who made it long enough to breathe real air but he hadn’t lasted long after that and you remember holding the body (before Joe snatched it from your hands as Rictus sobbed brokenly) and thinking, why can’t I have this?

Your babies don’t live long enough to form proper bodies. They don’t kick at your stomach or make you crave things like Dag’s did. Your babies make your body hurt to touch and they cause cramps in your stomach that make you want to vomit.

They self-murder themselves right out of your womb, your babies and you wonder if that’s Joe’s punishment or yours.

“We are _not_ things.”

The other’s look up from what they’re doing to stare at Splendid where she’s sitting calmly on her bed with her hands in her lap.

Earlier that day she and Toast had gotten into a screaming match over the stupidest thing and you can’t help but to think, you’re going to die here. You’re going to die in this room, with these girls, and you’re never going to breathe fresh air again.

You’re never going to hold a child again.

Never going to be free.

“What?”

“I just wanted to see how it felt to say it.” She says.

“It felt good.” She says.

“We are _not_ things.” She says again.

You don’t remember thinking ‘this is the start’, but that was the start. The day Splendid told you that you were worth something more than baby-maker and wife, that there was more to life than womb to tomb; that was the start your bravery.

* * *

She dies.

She falls beneath the wheel of Joe’s ride and you have this brief (so quick, barely there, you feel guilty about it always) thought that _ha_. Your husband killed his own baby this time.

It wasn’t you.

But then you realise Splendid’s gone too and you’re keening, begging to go back, go back, she’s right there you can still see her, _no, no, no._

You’d had Splendid since the day you arrived at the Citadel and you’d always wondered how long she’d been alone before you. She was the first, the constant.

How could you live without Splendid?

How could you be _free_ without Splendid?

You don’t stop.

There is no going back.

* * *

You go back.

Things are different now, in this home that isn’t a home.

The people below are insane as always, fighting over food now that water is available or space when food _is_ available. Always fighting, always killing each other.

Furiosa is strength, as Splendid had promised and you had seen on the road. She keeps you safe and strong too, refusing to let you wallow in self-pity even when you beg.

You sleep in the same bed you did before you left, living beside the same girls but still.

Things are different now.

 _You’re_ different.

Dag mentions Max a lot, with that funny little smirk of hers and when you think of Max you think of Nux and of witnessing his death.

Nux was. . . Nux was something to pity, something that needed love and just didn't get it.

Nux was your brothers, your children, each baby you lost even though you’d tried so hard to keep them.

Your heart aches when you think of his smile, his sacrifice.

Your heart aches.

Dag calls you a flower, "Like a desert flower," She smirks meanly but that’s her way, Dag. She smirks and spits and talks in riddles and you think maybe she’s just wired that way—a little differently than most. "You can handle anything and everything and you look so very pretty doing it."

She holds her daughter (perfect, if a little small, with blonde hair like her mother’s and eyes to match and Dag had named her Lux) out in offering and you take her carefully, swaddling the white cloth more snuggly around her.

You smile down at the child and think, one day. “Thanks, Dag.”

  



End file.
